Soccer Dad

We really regret getting caught

There is a lot objectionable to HDS Greenway's "Window of Hope in Mideast," not the least of which is his first paragraph:

ONE CAUSE for hope in the new year is the opening window of opportunity in post-Arafat relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Little could be done while Yasser Arafat lived. Jerusalem and Washington wouldn't speak to him, he wouldn't relinquish power, and the Palestinians wouldn't confer legitimacy on anyone else. So only the guns spoke.

The fault was Israel and the United States not talking to Arafat? Please. There was a need for the Israeli guns. Arafat committed himself to war against Israel. No country would willing turn a blind eye toward such violence. So Israel defended itself. Terrible destruction resulted. But it wouldn't have happened if Arafat had been genuinely interested in peace. His death was the fulfillment of a necessary, but as yet insufficient, requirement for peace.
There's a lot more to fight with the article. But I want to focus on:

When Abbas called for an end to rocket attacks on Israelis recently, Hamas and other militants demanded an apology for what they called "a stab in the back of the resistance." A Palestinian atrocity followed by an Israeli overreaction could derail everything.

An Israeli overreaction? please! The problem is the request Abbas made to stop was simply that attacks against Israel were counterproductive.
HELENE COOPER an editorial observer in the New York Times makes this point explicitly in "Softly Going Where Yasir Arafat Feared to Tread":

When you're campaigning to be the one who could bring peace, there's a fine line between telling people what they want to hear, and telling them what they need to hear. Here in the heart of this militant city, which has launched so many suicide bombers at Israel, that candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, spent yesterday daring to tell his most hard-line constituency what Yasir Arafat never had the courage to say: their intifada has hurt them more than it's hurt the Israelis.

That's the problem. Abbas has never said that the terror against Israel is wrong and it flies in the face of the promises Arafat made. Nope. Just that the Israeli response has made it counterproductive. (Abbas is admitting what anyone with two eyes can see: Israeli force has forced the Palestinian terror into retreat. Greenway apparently thinks that's a bad thing.) But he's also refusing to acknowledge that terror is wrong by itself. (The Palestinians and their fellow travelers have been doing this for years, using the concept of occupation and declaring it to be the worst crime against humanity imaginable legitimizing Palestinian violence in response.)
Nearly 10 years ago Arab terrorists launched a vicious attack against a hitchhiking post for Israeli soldiers in Beit Lid. A first explosion cause a lot of mayhem, but then when others went to help, a second explosion killed many of the first responders. In "TALK AND MURDER
THE PALESTINIANS' DOUBLE GAME" (January 27, 1995) Charles Krauthammer noted how Arafat responded to that:

Yasser Arafat, reputed leader of the "moderate" Palestinians, offered this one public reaction: He deplored the fact that the bombing had made it more difficult for him now to extend his control to the West Bank, and vowed, therefore, that this "nonsense" had to stop.

This nonsense blew the body parts of Israeli youngsters into trees, to be retrieved with cranes. No matter, say the Western peace fanatics. The only answer to such outrages is more peace. This is peace?

Abbas is simply a successor to Arafat (as Krauthammer noted today in "Arafat's Heir."
Not only has Abbas adopted the harshest rhetoric of his late mentor, he has the similar inability to condemn violence as an evil of itself. (And they each have had more than their share of apologists who will explain their extremism arguing that the "aren't strong" enough to take on the miltants or that they need to maintain their credibility. Read the whole Cooper and Greenway articles to imbibe their wisdom on this pont.)
In "Risking Peace," Saul Singer argues that what's needed is for Israel's friends to stop coddling the PA and other Arab states. Insist that they work towards peace. Israel is taking the risks (and all too often, paying the price) for peace. It's time to insist that the Arab world do no less. That requires ending the free pass Abbas et al continue to receive and insisting that he acknowledge that terror is categorically wrong.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at January 7, 2005 01:52 PM | TrackBack